- Hi, I'm Cynthia.

And welcome to my recently renovated,

but still a work in progress, Brooklyn townhouse.

Let's go.

(bright music)

So before we go inside, I have to talk about our vestibule.

When we got this place, it was super dark,

and we wanted folks to get a sense

of who they were meeting when they came into the house.

And so we went with this super bright and colorful wallpaper

and it immediately made the space

feel like so alive, so bright.

Also, I love the tile.

We initially wanted to do an all Moroccan tile.

But what happened is we found a really lovely tile shop.

And so we went around and we picked up

a bunch of random tiles and we put together this mosaic,

still one of my favorite things we've done in this space.

(bright music)

This is our main living, sitting area.

We wanted to create a space that was both intimate,

but also a little bit more formal

than the other spaces we have in the house.

I think one of the best decisions we made

was actually getting a sectional.

So this sectional is from CB2.

It actually comes in a much longer version

for people who have more space, but this is New York,

so this is about as much space as we could fit in here.

Another thing I love is this Arhaus coffee table.

Literally, I think everyone we've shown this table to

has asked us "Where'd you get this table? Where is it from?"

Everybody wants to know the story.

I am quite honestly not someone

who's ever purchased any leather furniture before.

I don't know why. It just never seemed to be quite my style.

But I really love this chair.

It looks like with every week that we have it,

just the way it ages is beautiful.

It's also from Arhaus and it is super comfortable.

Okay, so this home, a hundred plus years old,

we purchased it and it had just lotsa lotsa issues.

And this fireplace had actually been painted over.

You couldn't see the marble anymore.

Someone asked me like, "Who would paint over marble?"

I don't know, but someone apparently thought

that was a great idea.

Thankfully, we were able to get it back to its glory.

And honestly felt like the best thing to do with this

was to complement it with a beautiful mirror.

And I love this mirror on here,

this like gilded, this antique gilded.

My advice is if you ever wanna get a mirror,

just go for one that's as tall as possible.

It really just adds height to your space.

Everything just looks grander.

And we need that a lot in New York City

where, you know, our spaces are smaller.

So the last thing I have to talk about in this space

is my lovely Birds of Paradise.

It's amazing what happens once you start getting plants.

I never thought I would be able to keep a plant.

I didn't think I had a green thumb,

but we have great natural light right here where she is,

so adore, adore, adore.

(bright music)

So now we are in the kitchen.

This is actually the space

that gets the most used in this house.

Two of the decisions I'm really, really happy we made,

firstly, I'm really happy we went with open shelving.

It never feels too crowded in here.

It makes a small kitchen feel even bigger.

And I think by taking the quartz, which I'm gonna say,

I'm really happy we went with quartz.

This one has that look and feel of marble,

but you're not gonna get the stress of marble.

So yeah, we went all the way to the very top with it

because we wanted to make the space feel just continuous

and really like tall.

Another thing I also love that we did

is we went with a slightly larger, a 36 range.

This is from Fisher Paykel.

If you're someone like me who loves to cook,

it's really nice to have that extra space on the range.

We love color, and we're always looking for ways

to bring color into our space.

And so we thought, why not have fun

and go with playful pendants in the kitchen.

And these also, you could find on Etsy,

which is, you know, a great place to find stuff.

So when we got this place,

this was actually a bedroom with a bathroom.

The good thing with having the bathroom right there

was pipes already in,

so plumbing for the kitchen was going to be easy.

But the other thing we did

was there was this big, massive wall.

And if you know anything about Brooklyn townhomes

is they tend to be quite dark.

And so one of the things you have to do

when you're thinking about a renovation

is how do I make it not feel narrow

and how do I make it feel light and bright.

And so by taking down the wall completely,

we were able to bring in so much light in here

that oftentimes people commend

and they think it is a much bigger space.

(gentle music)

So here's our dining space.

In some ways, I feel like if you really wanted

to get a sense of who I am,

this is the space where you would find out,

reason being there's all these books in our built-in.

And a lot of those books are around travel, food,

things that I really love, places I really love.

It was really important to me

to have a space to showcase things

that we either purchased when we traveled

or books that we loved.

And so we created this arched bookshelf,

which has turned out to be

the highlight of the entire space.

Not only do we get to display things

that we get when we travel,

but I also have some great local finds.

For example, this, this is just beautiful.

It's by Franca here in Brooklyn.

Also, we got this planter, which is just the cutest.

It's in the shape of a baseball hat.

This is also local Bed-Stuy made, Black female designer.

This is RAINI HOME.

They have a lovely little shop here in Brooklyn.

So for anyone who's looking for original pieces,

stuff you won't find just about anywhere,

you should check out RAINI.

Also had to get this wood table.

I've been eyeing this for such a long time.

This is from West Elm.

It's all reclaimed wood. It's just beautiful.

Also, I wanted a bench

that's a little longer than the table,

because what happens is you can squeeze in

a few more people when you do that.

Another thing that has really brought our space together

has been the lighting,

and it just adds a little sparkle to your space.

So probably 75% of our lighting is Kalco.

They just make such standout, unique stuff.

It's like every time people walk in, they're like,

"Where did you get that from? Where's your lighting from?"

It's like the jewelry, it's like earrings, you know.

It's maybe not needed, but then you put it on

and you feel dressed up all of a sudden.

Now that we're done with the parlor level,

how about we head on upstairs?

(bright music)

Here we are in the twins' room.

And you could see the theme kind of continues again,

quite a lot of black and white,

black and white bedding, black and white rug.

To make it a little bit more fun and childlike,

we did add these stickers.

You will notice another pattern when you talk to me

is that I get a lot of stuff from Etsy.

And these wall stickers were from Etsy.

We did a little black and white wall collage

of their photos.

We are those parents.

We are a little bit obsessed with them.

I guess that's the season we're in,

so we had a lot of cool photos that we have of them.

Very quickly, we started receiving a lot of books for them,

and then we started buying a lot of books.

And we knew that we needed to have a place to put them.

And so we got these ledges from Ikea,

then they're just excellent.

It's actually two pieces together to make it longer.

You know, we'll probably, as their book collection grows,

it'll just keep expanding.

Also, I'm originally from Cameroon

so French was my first learned language.

It's kind of hard when your spouse doesn't speak a language

to make it the language of the house.

But we did start getting them some books in French as well,

because I hope they'll get into speaking French with me.

And then we could gossip

without dad knowing what we're talking about.

(gentle music)

So this is our bedroom.

This space, honestly, is exactly how I wanted it to be.

When I thought about like,

"Okay, so what would we want in a bedroom?"

I just wanted a place that felt relaxed,

super not fussy, minimal, just not too much.

I think I had this bed on my Pinterest board

for such a long time,

just waiting for the perfect time and place to get it.

Once I saw this bed, it kind of set the tone

for what I wanted the room to look and feel like.

Another thing that's key with me

is I only like white bedding,

all white bedding all the time.

I feel like it just makes you feel clean.

It's almost like when you go to a really nice hotel

and there's like crisp white bedding.

I upholstered this bench myself.

I actually got this Kelly Wearstler fabric

from Decorators Fabric, which is really great.

There's all these places where you can get fabrics you love.

And I got what is pretty much like a staple,

like bench, like very basic from Amazon.

And then I was able to personalize it

by putting the fabric of my choice on it.

But yeah, I think it's fun to do things like that,

ways to personalize your space

and just make it feel like yours.

So here we are in our bathroom.

And I'm really happy

that we had The Brownstone Boys on this project with us

because they introduced us to Ethan.

He goes by The BUILD with ETHAN,

and he created these custom builds for us.

We were able to get all the storage that we needed

as well as his and hers sinks.

Another little thing that we did

is we played a little bit with tile in here.

We did a herringbone on our backsplash,

but then on the other side, in our actual shower,

we wanted a really colorful, fun tile,

so we went with like an aquamarine blue.

It's just interesting.

It makes the space fun to look at because everywhere

something's just a little bit different,

a little bit unexpected,

and we just wanted to have fun with it.

So this is really where I have to say

thank you to my husband

for allowing me to just take up all this space

with all these things that I absolutely love and adore.

I really just wanted for a long time

to have a space to actually showcase